


This Endris Night

by Pun



Category: Aubrey-Maturin Series - Patrick O'Brian
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-21
Updated: 2012-12-21
Packaged: 2017-11-21 20:01:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/601537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pun/pseuds/Pun
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack goes in search of Stephen on Christmas Eve.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Endris Night

**Author's Note:**

  * For [takadainmate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/takadainmate/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide, Takadainmate!
> 
> Many thanks to Alltoseek for the beta and to Lenore and Thirdbird for audiencing and encouragement. All remaining mistakes are the fault of the author.

Snow had begun to fall by the time Jack reached London: a biting wind coming off the river caused several flakes to insinuate between his cloak and his sou'wester, creating tiny pricks against his neck which seemed to consume all of the warmth in his body. Despite his many experiences rounding the Horn, Jack shivered and hunched his shoulders unhappily. “I have been too long ashore,” he thought, “if I am griping at such small discomforts,” even as he quickened his step. 

Many of the windows of the shops he passed were decorated with holly and yew branches and many of the homes as well. A number of beggars were congregating on the steps of St. Clement’s in anticipation of the alms to be passed out for the holiday. One woman in a ragged brown cloak was holding the hand of a child with such a pinched hungry look that Jack thought of Charlotte and Fanny’s rounded faces and dimpled limbs with a pang, wishing he could stop and give them something without causing a general riot.

Mrs. Broad was in Dorsetshire visiting her sister, but the serving girl at the Grapes admitted him, assuring him that Stephen was there, that the gentleman had hardly stirred since he arrived on Tuesday – “nor eaten neither”, but upon entering the sitting room he believed it to be empty on account of its being so hellfire cold.

“There you are, Stephen!” Jack exclaimed, when he caught sight of him through the gloom. What he thought was a pile of dirty linen on a chair, was, in fact, Stephen under a heap of blankets. “I didn’t spy you there, at first.” 

“Jack, this is a surprise. I hardly thought Sophie could spare you,” Stephen said with little animation to his voice or expression, and his lack of usual enthusiasm at a reunion pained Jack’s heart.

“What are you doing sitting in the cold and dark? Are you not forever warning me against the falling damps?” Jack scolded as he made up the fire, keeping up a steady rate of chatter in the face of Stephen’s rather perfunctory and cold greeting. 

In truth, he and Stephen had not parted on the best of terms. They had been speaking of the traditions surrounding Christmas, and Jack may have made a few less than politic remarks on how certain habits of the Catholic practice bordered on idolatry, meant purely in a general sense, not at all intended to be a reflection on Stephen himself, but he feared they had caused offence. He had not realised it in the moment, for he scarcely even recalled that Stephen was a papist a good portion of the time, but when Stephen had taken a hasty and premature leave the following morning he had begun to smoke that something was amiss. When his note begging that Stephen would return to Ashgrove cottage in time to take Christmas dinner with the family went unanswered, he felt certain of it and had followed his friend into town to beg his forgiveness and carry him back to Hampshire. 

Once there was a good blaze in the grate, Jack thought it best to stick to his principle of going straight at ‘em and launched into the apology he had prepared during his ride. 

“I do hope, Stephen, that I didn’t say anything to offend you when you were at Ashgrove. I am afraid whenever the subject of religion gets mentioned I manage to bring myself by the lee, although I never do mean to offend. You know I’m not much hand at conversing unless the topic is rigging a sail or firing a cannon, and I never meant to cast any sort of aspersions on your religion or your character. I do hope you’ll accept my sincerest apology.” 

As he finished speaking he became aware of a steady sniffling noise coming from Stephen. For a moment he thought Stephen had been overcome by his words, a most unusual if not unheard-of occurrence for Stephen who was uncommon close with his feelings and had often criticised Jack and the English in general for their lachrymose tendencies. “Well, I did make a tolerably fine speech for once at that,” he reflected just as the sniffling got louder and was followed by a sneeze, and a painful-sounding cough. 

Concerned, Jack brought the candle closer to Stephen’s face. He noticed that his friend’s eyes were glassy and rimmed with red, and his skin sallow even beyond its usual pallor. 

“Why Stephen, are you ill?” 

“No,” answered Stephen gasping as his body was wracked with a renewed spasm of coughing that made Jack wince in sympathy to hear it, knowing how it must tear at Stephen’s throat. 

“Why, you li—are surely mistaken,” Jack said, looking down into Stephen’s face and placing a hand against his forehead. “You are burning up with fever. How long have you been ill? I will call for soup at once,” said Jack, ignoring Stephen’s harsh insistence that his condition was “only a trifling imbalance of the humours. Hardly an illness at all. I do not tell you how to reef your jib, pray do not attempt to correct me in a diagnosis,” a speech that lost much of its conviction by being interrupted several times with more bouts of coughing.

Despite Jack’s bellow which could be easily heard on the lower deck of a 74-gun man-of-war in a gale, and therefore was surely audible just down the stairs of a guest house, it took Jack’s calling three times to rouse the serving girl and longer still for her to heat a pot of broth for Stephen. 

Stephen’s hand shook terribly as he ate. His shirt appeared to be receiving as much of the liquid as his stomach.

“Stephen, will you not let—“ Jack began, reaching his hand out for the spoon, but a look of cold fury on Stephen’s face immediately checked him, and he finished by saying, “I’ll go and make up a fire in the bedroom,” comforting himself with the thought that at least Stephen was eating something, and there would be eggs and bacon in the morning which would be less liable to be cast overboard in the crossing from plate to gullet. 

After he had drained the bowl, Stephen allowed Jack to help him into a fresh shirt which, if neither clean nor pressed, was at least dry, then hauled him up and began guiding him to the bedroom.

“I do not require your assistance,” Stephen insisted waspishly, even as he leant on Jack heavily as Jack guided him to bed, shivering against Jack, despite the high fever.

Jack regarded him for a moment, continuing to shiver under the bedclothes, his eyelids half-closed and his skin horribly grey and clammy, and then removed his own breeches and coat, and lay down beside him.

“Pray do not wrap yourself entirely in that blanket, leaving none for me, as is your tendency,” Stephen said without opening his eyes. “It will barely contain your great girth as it is.”

Jack, noting that in fact the blanket was scarcely wide enough to cover the both of them side-by-side maneouvered Stephen’s unresisting form so that most of his body was lying across Jack’s with Jack’s arm encircling his waist, and Jack’s shoulder as his pillow. 

“There. We shall be very snug like this,” said Jack.

Stephen made a vague noise and rolled his head to the side so that his forehead was against Jack’s jaw, and the puffs of Stephen’s exhalations tickled the hollow of his throat.

“Good night, Stephen,” he said and immediately fell into a deep, contented sleep. 

Christmas morning dawned clear and cold. The winter sun shining through the frost-limned pane fell on Jack’s face and brought him slowly awake. 

Stephen pressed heavily against him–they had scarcely stirred from their positioning of the night before—solid and warm but no longer unnaturally hot.

Life on land was frequently too quiet for Jack Aubrey in both a metaphorical and a literal sense. The creak of the rigging, the bosun’s pipe, even the scraping of holystones against the deck—to him these were the sounds of peaceful existence. However, in that moment he was thankful for the absolute stillness around him, the only audible sound that of Stephen’s even breath. As much as he wished they might soon again be at sea, he felt a warm and quiet gratitude for this moment of complete privacy.

Jack watched Stephen for several minutes until his eyelids began to twitch and eventually opened. “Jack,” he said, his voice a hoarse rasp. 

Stephen cleared his throat, sat up. “Jack,” he said again. “Good morning.”

“Good morning, old Stephen. Shall I call for breakfast?”

“If you please,” said Stephen, returning Jack’s open smile. “I find I have a powerful hunger.”

Jack was nearly equal on land to the enormous breakfast he consumed at sea, and Stephen, having an appetite for the first time in several days, was no less rapacious. Between them they consumed three pots of coffee, a pile of bacon, six pieces of toast with Sophie’s best marmalade, and seven eggs. 

“You seem wonderfully improved,” Jack remarked. “And I have something that should raise your spirits. I do hope you will like it. The gentleman at the shop did assure me it was a most rare specimen, perfect for a discerning naturalist.” Jack fetched the oddly-shaped parcel wrapped in brown paper and placed it in Stephen’s lap. “Happy Christmas,” he said, watching his friend anxiously as he unwrapped it.

“The skull of a _Stenella coeruleoalba_?” asked Stephen.

“Yes!” Jack cried, delighted. “Or I suppose it must be. That’s the one you were so determined to see before we left Calcutta? You may recall, Stephen, that you spoke rather warmly when we were obligated to go to the governor’s ball and you could not take your cruise up the Ganges.” In fact, Stephen’s presence had not been so entirely necessary at the governor’s as Jack had represented, but he had not cared for the appearance of the lascar Stephen had engaged and still less for his filthy launch, as unseaworthy and pox-ridden a vessel as Jack had ever laid eyes on, and he could not allow that Stephen should set foot on it. 

“You refer to the _Platanista gangetica_ , Jack?”

“Ain’t this the fellow?” 

Stephen looked once more from the skull to Jack’s face and back again.

“Sure, now I see it must be the _gangetica_. I did not recall the snout and cranium was so like that of the _coeruleoalba_ , but now I do recall having read so. I believe it was in Roxburgh’s paper on the species. I shall treasure it always,” he said with such pure sincerity that the shadow of Jack’s doubt was completely cleared by the rays of affection and happiness that beamed from Stephen’s face. 

Stephen moved to place the skull amongst several other specimens on the mantle. Halfway there he began to cough again. Jack rushed to him with his coffee which Stephen drank deeply with another grateful, affectionate look.

“I fear that I lost track of the date and do not have a present for you, my dear.” 

“Why there’s nothing I need. I have all I could wish for, only,” sensing this was the moment to press the point Jack continued, “I should hate to think of you alone on Christmas day, especially when you are ill.”

“I have told you not to attempt at diagnosis.”

“Very well, but you will come back and take Christmas dinner with the family, won’t you? We’ve bought an enormous goose, and Sophie is such a hand at mince pies. Do come say you’ll come.”

Stephen came to him and took his hand, saying, “Of course I shall be there, joy. I wouldn’t miss it.”

**Author's Note:**

> Please excuse the anachronism of having Jack give Stephen a Christmas gift, a practice that was not really common until later in the 19th century. I couldn't resist!
> 
> Stephen, of course, had wanted to see the Gangetic river dolphin, a species that was only first described to a European audience in 1801. Jack, unfortunately, purchased him the skull of a striped dolphin, a common species that Stephen would have had many opportunities to observe in the Mediterranean and the South Atlantic.


End file.
